Valhalla Station

by Chris Pourteau

  Krys nodded, already assessing the miner on the table. “Just leave the sealant. I’ll cover for a bit.”

  “Thanks.”

  Edith retreated to a corner of the infirmary. There was no real privacy. The room was packed with patients and personnel. A marshal watched her closely, then returned his attention to the room.

  “Hi, Luther,” Edith said, working to present a warm smile on her tired face. But she wanted the exhaustion to show too. Exhaustion was her excuse. “I’m so glad to see you’re all right.”

  “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been home for hours!”

  Her expression faltered. “Home? I thought—”

  “The Company released us after the shuttle hit,” Luther said. His face, puffy from lack of sleep, was still shaded by the grime of work. “With the ring compromised, they’re having to figure out a workaround for the schedule. So I’m taking the day off. You haven’t answered my question.”

  “I’m at work,” she answered. “There were a lot of—”

  “Work?” he said. “Why does the infirmary need an accountant? You counting pill bottles again?”

  “No. They kind of—well, pressed me into service to help with the wounded.”

  “Uh-huh,” Luther said, his tone that of a detective judging a suspect’s story.

  “You should be here, Luther.” Edith injected as much concern into her voice as she could fake. “They think the pilot was carrying some virus or something. They’re screening everyone in case there’s danger of an outbreak.”

  “Fuck that,” he said. “I feel fine. It’s a day off. I’m not gonna spend it in a line.”

  Across the room, a commotion drew her attention. The miner with the scruff on his face was refusing Krys’s attempts to take his blood. Dr. Estevez was already intervening.

  “But, Luther, if you don’t come in…” She glanced at a nearby marshal. Whispering, she said, “The marshals are rounding up everyone who might’ve been—”

  “Fuck the badgers.” Luther liked to bluster about the marshals, about the money-bitch Adriana Rabh, about anyone he figured thought they were better than him. He liked to do it in private, anyway. “A day off is a day off.”

  “Okay,” she said. The miner on the bed was sweating. She could see it from here. Estevez was trying to calm him down.

  “I want you home,” Luther said. “Tell them you need to go home.”

  “I—”

  “You’re only a volunteer,” Luther said. “No one will give a shit.”

  “I…” Edith pulled her eyes from the scene across the infirmary so she could think. Whispering again, she said, “If I leave, the marshals will get suspicious.” Invoking Luther’s fear of the marshals was an old strategy.

  “Maybe.” Luther grimaced, debate playing across his features. “Fucking badgers.”

  “I’ll get home as soon as I can, okay? I promise.” Edith pulled her lips into a tired smile again. “I just want to help out.” Then, for good measure: “And I don’t want to get you in trouble, love.”

  “You could help me out by having dinner done when it’s supposed to be,” he said, though his voice had lost most of its fire. “Fuck it. I’m going out. And you better be home when I get back.”

  Edith nodded. Did the relief show on her face? A little more time on furlough. A little more time feeling relevant. She’d never complain about so-far-unnecessary health alerts again.

  “Okay. And I’ll make some of that—”

  Luther broke the connection.

  “I heard it’s everywhere!” the man on the table yelled.

  The marshals stood up a little straighter. Recalling the fight earlier with the miner Brandt, Edith crossed the room. The man’s voice became covert, like it was hiding a secret.

  “It’s the Soldiers of the Solar Revolution,” he said. “They’re behind it. They’re gonna kill us all!”

  “So far we’ve discovered nothing, sir,” Estevez was saying. “The alert was merely a precaution. And I don’t know anything about any soldiers.”

  “They’re behind it!” the miner exclaimed. His eyes were wild, his color blanched. “The virus!”

  “If you’ll just let us test your blood, we can have you up and out of here in a few minutes,” Krys said. She nodded to Edith at the foot of the bed. Krys wanted her to get ready to hold the man’s feet. “Conspiracy theories won’t help anyone, okay?”

  “I don’t want you to stick me,” he said, trying to rise off the bed. “And it’s no theory!”

  Two of the marshals began to move toward them.

  “Sir, you can’t leave yet,” Estevez said, his hand on the man’s chest. “We have to examine you.”

  “Go to hell! I…”

  Phish.

  The man looked at Krys as she withdrew the hypo from his neck.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Consider it a cocktail,” Krys said as the man began to lie back. “Free of charge.”

  “You bitch, I’ll—”

  “Why don’t you tone it down,” said one of the marshals, a big man with a broad chest and a narrow waist. His smile was reassuring, his hand resting lightly on his sidearm. “Don’t abuse the medical staff, buddy. They’re just trying to help.”

  But the man, sedated, had already closed his eyes. His fingers wiggled, and then he was quiet.

  “I think I can handle this now, Krys,” Estevez said. “Thanks, Marshal.”

  The big man nodded and stepped away, one eye still on the miner.

  “Sure you don’t want me to deal with it?” Krys asked.

  “There’s something wrong with him,” Estevez said. “Just look at his coloring. More likely radiation exposure than some killer alien bacteria. I’ve got him.”

  “Right,” Krys said. “Next!”

  Edith followed her to the empty bed where Estevez had been seeing patients.

  “That’s the second one in less than twenty-four hours,” Krys said. “Panicking, I mean. I thought pioneers, especially this far out, were supposed to be tough.”

  “Everyone fears something,” Edith said. “Like being one crack away from death by vacuum.”

  “I guess. We do tend to take things for granted around here. Hey! I said, next!”

  An older man dressed in a long coat and holding an old-fashioned hat in his hand approached. He had a grizzled look like the miner they’d just put under, though his unshaven face was gray, not brown. A salt-and-pepper jawline. There was a smaller, younger woman behind him, though she didn’t seem to be in line. Her face looked like it’d been sculpted from sarcasm. She held up her hands.

  “Doc already got me. All clean.”

  Nodding, Krys gestured to the man. “Up here, please. You don’t look like a miner.”

  “Not anymore,” he said. He shared a look with the short woman standing apart from them. “Private joke.”

  “Okay,” Krys said. “Edith, hand me a sticker.”

  Edith had to dig through the nearby cabinet to find the blood-draw kit. They’d need more of those in the next supply run.

  “In fact,” Krys said while she waited, “you look like you crawled out of a twentieth-century paperback.”

  “Thanks.” The man peered at her shrewdly. “I work hard on my image.”

  “I wouldn’t have guessed,” Krys said wryly.

  The woman leaning against the wall laughed out loud.

  “Do all the women in this colony come fully equipped with smartass?” the patient asked. He looked to Edith like he could reach out and touch sixty years old. And those years had been hard won.

  “Yes,” Krys answered, taking the kit from Edith. “I need your name.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this screening is Company ordered, and we have to know who we’ve screened,” Krys answered.

  “Whom.”

  “What?”

  “The pronoun you’re looking for,” the man said, “is whom.”

  “Okay. To whom am I speaking, then?”
/>
  “Finn,” he said. “Sawyer Finn.”

  “You were aboard the Cassini’s Promise?”

  “I was.”

  Nodding, Krys turned to Edith. “Check the passenger manifest.” Turning back to her patient, she said, “If you’re lying, we’ll know. Patient ID by DNA is automatic with the test I’m gonna run.”

  Finn cocked his head. “What makes you think I’m lying?”

  “You have that face,” Krys said.

  Before he could offer his opinion on that, Edith said, “I’ve got him here. Sawyer Finn. Migrant miner. Coming from Mars via Earth.”

  Krys looked him up and down. “Miner, huh?”

  “I changed my mind,” Finn said, gesturing around the room. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Uh-huh. Forearm, please.”

  He rolled up the coat sleeve of his left arm.

  “What happened here?” Krys asked, running her forefinger lightly over his scars.

  “Mining accident,” he said shrewdly.

  “I see you took your own smartass pill today,” Krys said.

  “I try. By all means, keep doing that,” Finn said, glancing down as she stroked his arm. “It’s the most action I’ve had in weeks.”

  Edith watched the red creep up the back of Krystin Drake’s neck. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her friend embarrassed. Krys was usually the one doing the embarrassing.

  “Just searching for a vein,” Krys said, her color deepening. She began to tap the skin at the crook of Finn’s elbow. Edith suppressed a smile.

  “I can show you a thicker one than that.”

  Krys stared at the old man, who smiled wickedly, eyebrows dancing. Then, without caution, she pressed the needle into his arm.

  “Ow!”

  Dark blood began to flow through the narrow tube and into her reader. “Imagine that in the thicker one,” Krys purred.

  “I’ll pass, thanks.”

  The woman leaning on the wall was enjoying every minute of their exchange. And, if she was honest with herself, so was Edith. A welcome moment of levity in a long, stressful day from hell.

  “Well?” The woman on the wall sounded almost hopeful. “Is he dying?”

  “Not today,” Krys said, curiosity belying the good news. “He’s all clean.”

  Edith pointed at the red light on Krys’s reader. “What’s that mean?”

  “It means…” Krys began, then looked up at Finn. “It means you don’t have an implant.”

  “I don’t,” he confirmed.

  “That’s not possible,” Edith said. “Everyone has one. SCIs are mandatory.”

  “Not me. I’m a special case. Look me up.”

  Krys’s gaze lingered a moment longer, then she nodded to Edith. “Seal him up while I check.”

  Edith moved to the bedside as Krys stepped away.

  “This might be a little chilly,” she said.

  “At my age, everything’s a little chilly,” Finn replied. But he didn’t flinch as the flesh seal layered over the hole in his arm. Tougher than he let on, she supposed. “Thank you,” he said. The playfulness he’d shown toward Krys had been replaced with a softer expression, an open look of gratitude.

  “You’re welcome,” Edith said, suddenly nervous under his gray eyes.

  “Okay, you’re all clear,” Krys said. “I see in your record: ‘SCI exempt.’ I’ve never seen that for anyone before.”

  “Well, we can’t all be as special as me,” Finn said, rolling down the sleeve of his longcoat. “I’m free to go?”

  “Sure,” Krys said, still distracted by the anomaly of a patient with no implant.

  “Thanks again,” he said, with a glance at Edith. “Ready, Ms. Smith?”

  The short woman levered herself off the wall. Finn muttered something Edith barely heard. She thought maybe she’d misheard, in fact. Now, who in God’s name would name their ship the Hearse?

  “Next!” Krys called.

  Chapter 17

  Kwazi Jabari • Aboard the Pax Corporatum

  Kwazi gazed out at the stars. He’d turned down the lights of the private observation lounge so he could see them better. Since he was the sole occupant of the lounge, no one had protested.

  The stars seemed not to move, though his back-channel told him that wasn’t really true. Human eyes, and the brain that processed what they saw, were hardwired to see things close up, not far away. Faraway tigers aren’t a threat to the camp.

  Standing here, feeling small and insignificant among the thousands of stars he could see with his naked eye, made him somehow feel real again. Significant, ironically. A substantial speck of dust dwarfed by the majesty of the universe.

  Feeling inconsequential was, at least, feeling.

  “This is your new mission,” Helena Telemachus had told him, “holding the Company together. Help us keep another Facility Twelve from happening.”

  Try as he might, Kwazi couldn’t keep her out of his head. Helena was a constant, like the starlight outside the thick plastisteel of the ship’s viewport. Whenever he thought he’d found a moment away from missing Amy, from remembering her body on that cold, metal slab, from feeling like he would fold in on himself and disappear into the hole at the center of his being, Helena would take her place. Either in person or in thought, reminding Kwazi how important he was. What a hero he was. How vital he was to the Company.

  That explained, he supposed, why Tony Taulke had dispatched them on his personal starship to the Jovian system. The Pax Corporatum, the largest civilian vessel in the solar system, the soaring symbol of Taulke’s power as CEO of SynCorp. When the Corporatum sailed to a planet, whether bearing Tony Taulke or not, the message was loud and clear.

  SynCorp is watching. SynCorp is here.

  “When we get to Callisto, I need you engaged, Kwazi,” Telemachus had said once they’d settled aboard. “The cancer of sabotage is metastasizing in the corporate body. I don’t mean to minimize your loss, but—”

  “—sometimes ripping off the bandage is best,” Kwazi explained to the stars.

  Reluctantly, he closed his eyes. Orange speckles, tiny suns, twinkled on the canvas of his eyelids. The starship’s engines massaged the soles of his feet through the deck. He pretended it was the harmony of the cosmos reaching to touch him through the hull of the ship. It was a mental exercise Milani had taught him. A way of centering himself by connecting to the world around him. A speck linked to the universe through the dark ether between the stars. Connection through nothingness.

  Meaning from meaninglessness.

  Opening his eyes, Kwazi stared at the middle star in Orion’s Belt, the brightest point of light he could see. He squinted, trying to focus harder to make it brighter. He concentrated on the slight tremor in the deck. He imagined more than felt it traveling through his bones to his fingertips. He imagined the softness of Amy’s fingertips touching his. One of the accidental connections that happens among miners working in close quarters.

  Innocent and pure. Electrifying.

  “Can I join you?”

  The voice, intruding again. Helena, reasserting control.

  “Not now,” he whispered, holding onto the stars with his eyes. “Please, not now.”

  “Kwazi?”

  Amy’s soft fingertips withdrew.

  Kwazi had had enough. Enough of Helena’s lectures about moving on and his duty to the Company. Enough of Helena telling him how he should feel, what he should do. He turned quickly to confront her, once and for all.

  Milani Stuart stepped back, surprise on her face. Her hand, extended in concern, withdrew.

  “Dr. Stuart?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I—I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t think there’d be anyone up here, honestly.”

  His anger liquefied, draining quickly out of him. When he allowed himself to feel, Milani Stuart was the one bright spot in his life now. A confidant, a nurse, a friend, a counselor. The antidote to Helena’s subtle, constant
influence.

  At first, Kwazi had resisted talking to Stuart about losing Amy and the others. Helena insisted. Kwazi considered it the one right thing she’d done for him. He was far from better. Better was a faraway planet circling one of the stars outside the window. But Milani Stuart and her kindness, her patient willingness to sit in silence with him—to be alone together with him—had allowed him to gently, painfully begin to process his loss. Silence had become tears, and tears had become words. About Amy and his feeling guilty for surviving. Words had only recently become the first new skin of healing.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Stuart. I thought … I thought I was the only one here.”

  “I can leave if you like,” she said, her voice tentative but warm. “This ship is so big … I’ll find another—”

  Kwazi reached out and took her hand before she could turn away. “No, please,” he said. “Please stay.”

  Milani hesitated, holding his hand for a moment and allowing hers to be held.

  “All right. Do you need a new prescription? If you’re still having trouble sleeping—”

  “No. I just wanted to … enjoy the calm.”

  She smiled kindly. Her smile reflected his own, he realized. It felt odd and out of place on him. He squeezed her hand once, then let it go and returned to the window to center himself again.

  “It’s funny,” Milani said, drawing near him. “I was practically raised in space, but I never get tired of losing myself in the view. My parents were early settlers on Mars. My father was an ice-miner. My mother was a botanist.”

  “Your father was a miner?” Kwazi said.

  “Yes.”

  “You never told me that before.”

  She shrugged. “It never came up.”

  He let himself feel the power of the ship’s engines in his feet again. The resonance of the universe, he told himself. But no, that moment had passed. It was just the engines thrumming in the deck.

  “Besides,” he said, “therapists aren’t supposed to reveal themselves, right?”

  Milani grunted. “Don’t call me that,” she said playfully. “I’m not licensed by the Company for therapy.”

  Kwazi focused on the brightest star he could see, a different one from before, one of the middle stars of Taurus the Bull. “Maybe not officially,” he said, “but that’s how I see you.” Then, turning to her: “And as a friend.”